Monday, August 15, 2011

Ripley's Aquarium

When we go away most of us enjoy viewing animals of some sort. The rest of the family just deals with it. We decided to visit an aquarium instead of a zoo. It's all indoors which can help with the complaining that's sure to happen and they're rarely as big as a zoo.

The Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies is pretty nice. There is a large see through tunnel you can walk through that's under the fish, including sharks and saw fish. We started above the tunnel looking at schools of fish. (You'll have to forgive the not so great pictures. Somehow the camera settings got changed without our knowing.)

Right before this picture we saw a diver in the tank with the fish. We missed the demonstration but enjoyed the fish none the less.

The Jellies are always mesmerizing.

In the discovery center there were some hands on things. Have you ever seen or petted a Horseshoe Crab?

Mattey would only touch it with Mickey's help. Kade went a different direction in the Discovery area. He thought it would be interesting to see what it was like to be underwater with the fish.

One of the last things we saw before leaving was the penguin exhibit. These creatures are fun to watch. Some of them would come up to the glass and watch us the same way we were watching them.

After the aquarium we walked around Gatlinburg for a while. For dinner we ate at Big Daddy's Pizzeria. The pizza was really good. Then we ordered churros for dessert. They were a little over cooked (burnt from the fire) but the sweetened ricotta cheese dip was yummy.